Get Back Up After You Fall
by tivainthesnogbox
Summary: Ziva spends a quiet Saturday morning at an ice rink.


Ziva pushed open the glass door to the rink on a quiet Saturday morning. She walked over to the receptionist and paid for her ticket and skate rental, offering her usual smile and nod before walking over to the skate counter. The receptionist was probably still in high school and had a different hair color almost every time Ziva came. On this particular Saturday, it was bubble gum pink.

She greeted the hockey coach in charge of the skate counter with the same smile and nod that had greeted the receptionist. She passed over her boots as he gave her the well-worn navy blue skates. _It is a good thing I brought my tall socks today, _Ziva thought as she laced up the skates. Two weeks ago, she had forgotten the tall socks, and the skates had left marks on her calves for three days. They had been quite uncomfortable. She was done faster today. Efficiency and speed at lacing up skates come with practice and time. Ziva had been coming for a while. Months in fact. Starting just three weeks after the attack on the NCIS building. She stood up, barely wobbling, and made her way to the next set of glass doors leading to the ice.

She pushed open the door and was immediately hit with the cool air filling the arena. She took a deep breath and felt the calming effect that came each time she came to her newfound haven.

This was where Ziva had started coming to think. She would not run into anyone she knew. She could just lace up a pair of skates and glide across the ice for a few hours. The atmosphere and rhythm of the blades meeting the ice were soothing as her thoughts rushed through her brain like a high-speed train. It was just Ziva and the ice. While there were other people, it was not nearly as busy on a Saturday morning during public skate as it was Saturday or Sunday afternoons.

She was the only skater here for public skate at the moment, but that probably had something to do with her being thirty minutes early. When Ziva found the time to come on these mornings, she usually arrived early to watch the morning practices of the figure skaters. They were so graceful as they practically floated across the ice. A few of them making the spins and triple jumps seem effortless. But Ziva knew those moves were not effortless. They took time, hard work, discipline, and a fair share of painful bruise creating falls in the pursuit of perfection.

Often when she watched the skaters she found herself wishing that this were the kind of perfection she had worked toward when she was younger and not the sort of perfection meaning the fortune of living another day when failure meant certain death.

No. Those thoughts were unwelcome here in the place where she came to ease her mind.

It was almost 10:00am, and all but one skater had exited the rink and entered the locker rooms. The lone skater out on the ice looked about sixteen. Her blond hair was kept away from her face in two French braids, and she was getting up from what had to be her fifteenth fall in a row. Ziva knew that look of determination. She would _land _that jump before finishing her practice session of the day. The skater took off again. Powerful strokes turning into the footwork leading into the jump. She lifted off and… Ziva held her breath. Landed! It was shaky, but she did it! The joy on her face was infectious, and Ziva smiled brightly sharing in the joy of that hard-earned accomplishment.

The hour struck. Other people had arrived and were making their way out onto the ice. A preteen had already fallen. The skater was by the boards collecting her things. A moment later, she was headed for the locker room, her smile firmly in place.

Ziva stood up from the bench and stepped out onto the ice. She no longer needed the wall. She just started gliding. Thinking and gliding. Left foot. Right foot. Left foot. Right foot. She let her thoughts wander.

In a way, her life was like that figure skater. She had fallen countless times, and she kept getting up. That skater kept getting up, not letting a fall keep her from trying again. Ziva kept going. She kept picking herself up after life threw things at her that made her fall. There was one time where she almost did not, but she was able to get back up and keep going after that horrifying summer, too.

Her ninja senses alerted her to a presence beside her. She looked over and smiled. Of course he would eventually find her. He was a veteran investigator. Tony held out his hand, and Ziva accepted. They circled the rink hand-in-hand. Not a word was said for almost an hour. Not a word was needed. They knew.

If she was like a skater in life, maybe she was slowly moving into pairs skating where she would have a partner to help her up the next time a hurdle in life caused her to fall. She knew who she wanted that partner to be. She knew that she wanted that partner to be a permanent institution in her life.

_Who knows? _Ziva thought, _Maybe someday I will watch my own daughter fall and succeed out here on the ice. And I know the perfect former athlete to help with that dream._


End file.
